There's still a deal I won't forget
by clementinemarch
Summary: Spoilers through the S4 finale


Spoilers: Through the series finale.

Summary: A look at Holder's life during the 5 year time jump.

Disclaimer: I in no way own The Killing. Title and some lines of internal dialogue are taken from 'Peace of Mind' by The Jezabels.

Thank you: To my sister for the beta

He gets through the next week somehow—beer and whiskey and avoiding Caroline—and when he drags himself back to work on a Wednesday morning Reddick gives him a long look that's halfway between pity and disgust. Holder meets his eyes, and looks down.

He's the lead on the Stansbury case now, and there's paperwork to finish. A tower of manila folders sits on his desk, some glossy photos sticking out: a naked black-and-white leg, a bloody white wall, a dead blonde boy on a hardwood floor. There's also boxes unceremoniously piled on the ground, five of them. Phoebe Stansbury's lingerie spills out of one. Across his desk is Linden's stuff: her notes, a jacket.

Holder sits for minutes before addressing his work, chair swiveled to the side, staring at nothing. Eventually he grabs the top folder and moves to the floor, lying on his back and propping his feet up on the boxes of evidence. He reads like that for a while, occasionally wadding up useless papers and throwing them at his basketball hoop.

"What the fuck are you doing, Holder?" asks Reddick, walking in to stand by his head.

"I concentrate better this way," explains Holder. "And I can multitask—work on my fitness. Keep things tight."

"Sit in your goddamn chair," says Reddick.

When Holder sits up he's got a pink bra strap hooked around his ankle. And there's a feeling, familiar, as the blood rushes from his head: the world dulls around him and quiets, or builds, to an even roar. He closes his eyes and breathes. _Serenity is not the absence of conflict_, he thinks. One of his addict sayings.

He leaves work early, and calls his girlfriend. "Hey," he says, "I'm sorry," and she forgives him and asks him to grab Chinese on his way home. _Happiness is appreciating what you have_, he thinks, and that's another one of his addict sayings, and it's true.

Holder drinks because his tiny daughter is almost born and a circle of dead girls marches through his mind, drowned and raped and stabbed and dead. He drinks because of phone calls he should have answered, because Caroline picks out butterfly wallpaper for the baby's room, because the monarchs are about to migrate through Seattle.

He drinks for other reasons, too.

Working with Jablonski is fine, mostly. His new partner is twice as lazy as Reddick and three times as stupid. They're working a triple in Queen Anne that's pretty cut-and-dry, as things go, elderly couple laid out with the stepson's Berreta, a visiting aunt caught in the crossfire.

There's no dead children and no bodies in trunks, and that suits Holder just fine. Jablonski's a shit detective and a worse interrogator, but their perp, Matthew Creighton, is guilty enough that is doesn't really matter. The only times Holder almost loses it is in the car, when Jablonski won't shut up about his fucking corgis or his timeshare in Disneyland, when he orders gyros at the Greek drive-through, when he chews with his mouth open and gets food lodged in his moustache, when he falls asleep and snores against the window.

"So, what names do you have picked out?" asks Jablonski one afternoon. They're staked out in front of Summerside Condominiums, keeping tabs on the dealer Creighton may have owed.

"Katherine," says Holder, and it's a lie, he would never give his kid that boring-ass name, but this is a truth too private to share with Jaboney.

"Beautiful name!" says his partner, around a mouthful of shawarma. "My wife's younger sister's name, you know. Katherine Markus. She used to live here until December '02, thereabouts. Moved to Col—"

"Yah, I really don't give a shit," says Holder, meaner than he meant it, and he feels bad at how hurt Jablonski looks.

(Because the main thing Holder can't stand about his new partner is who he's not, and that's not Jablonski's fault.)

The rest of the shift is awkward and silent, and Holder's wishing Jaboney would storm off and leave him in a peace when he recognizes a guy he once knew on the corner of Hawkins and Starrel. He tries not to think about it, but he doubles back post-shift to score, anyway, and he feels more excited than guilty.

On his way home he sees Creighton's boss slink out of the condos and into a waiting Escalade. He doesn't follow. Truthfully, he doesn't care.

He picks up flowers on the way home, sunflowers, and when Caroline asks why he's in such a good mood he thinks, _I just scored from a guy I used to know in Queen Anne_, and he says, "Because I love you, baby," and in his head he's grasping for one of his sayings, a mantra, something to hold onto, and it's now that he realizes he's falling.

His next trip is bad: he ends up on that same expressway, alone, laughing or screaming, and when he gets hit and lands on his back with the stars fuzzy in his eyes he's screaming "Fuck you." Fuck you over and over, to the sky, to her, to himself.

"Well, I guess this is the part where I tell you it's over," says Reddick, in the hospital.

"Which 'it'?" asks Holder.

"If you keep this shit up, everything," says Reddick. They're alone in the hospital room, and his old partner goes to securely close the door.

He sighs, and gives Holder a frank stare before continuing. "You know," he says, "this is what happens when you murder someone and cover it up—the guilt kills you. So don't think for one minute I feel sorry for you. You deserve this."

"I never killed no one."

"You or Linden," says Reddick. "What's the fucking difference?"

The secrets of the game are all but dead, at this point, but Holder responds anyway. "She's a redhead," he says.

Reddick shakes his head. Despite his words, there's still some pity in his eyes. "I can track her new number down for you," he says. "If you want. I'd probably have some words left to say to her too, if it were me."

"What?" says Holder. "No. I mean, didn't even know she changed her digits."

Reddick has a strange expression on his face. "You do know you called her seven times last night, right?"

"Umm," says Holder. "Nope. Pocket dial, man, you know how it is."

"Whatever," says Reddick. "She's gone, and you're here. My advice is, get your shit together before you lose more than your job."

His once-partner's intent is sincere, but turns out it's too late: when Caroline finally comes to see him, thirty-eight weeks along, it's to say goodbye.

A week later she takes a taxi to the hospital and delivers their child. He gets a phone call, afterwards, and a picture text of his baby in a pink hat. "Kalia," it says.

It was his name, of course. Caroline had wanted Elizabeth or Frances. Holder's kid was going to feel special, though, wasn't going to grow up another forgotten Stephen or Katherine or Sarah, cast aside for convenience, left behind. His daughter was going to be Kalia, a goddess name, a flower, and no one was going to forget her.

So when Caroline gives her his name, his choice, Holder knows that he's got one more chance.

He sees the therapist—Anne—for this reason, and as she drags him through all the cases, all the dead girls, all the bodies and the guilt, he mostly feels numb. It's when she asks him about the Stansburys that he starts to feel cagey, and when she presses him for details about the day they found Colonel Graves with the bodies in her study he finally snaps, jumps out of the chair.

"That must have been very difficult, to see something like that," says Anne, and Holder just laughs.

"They were dicks," he said, and he watches for Anne to react. "When you've taken your friend out of a cab trunk in pieces," he continues, "you start not caring as much about a couple of dead asshole punks." This was a mistake—Anne will probably make him talk about Bullet, now, and he had purposefully skipped over that—but Holder can't stop himself. "I didn't give a shit about those boys," he says.

Anne, turns out, is tough to crack. She barely bats an eyelash. "So what exactly is it about the Stansbury case that still upsets you so much?" she asks.

Holder shrugs. Anne gives him some time, after that, peering out at him over the pink rims of her glasses, but he remains silent.

"Well," she says, "let's continue, then. What was you and Linden's next case, after the Stansburys?"

"There wasn't," says Holder. "That was Linden's last one."

And Anne sets down her clipboard and settles into her chair, contemplating him, as if she's figured something out.

Holder dreams that night. It's a dream he's had before: Linden, standing at the edge of the dock, alone, and he's running towards her. Police sirens sound in the distance. The more he runs, the farther away she seems to get, and he knows with each step that he's going to lose her.

His cooking job at Clifton's isn't going to pay the bills, not where his apartment's at, so he packs his stuff and moves across town. He stretches out on his couch, one last time, before he leaves—no room for it in the new studio.

He remembers the night Bullet died, remembers crying on this couch, remembers Linden, telling him things would be ok. He remembers not believing her. He remembers her leaving, sometime before midnight; remembers the hopeless, panicked feeling of wanting her to stay.

Holder still hates her, a little bit, for what she said to him that day at the academy. He doesn't hate her for being gone, not really—mainly he has a daughter, now, and he just wants Linden to tell him that things are going to be ok. Maybe he would believe it, maybe not, but it doesn't mean anything coming from anyone but her.

Anne Lexington, Holder's counselor, works in a drab office building three blocks from his new digs. The walls of the waiting room are coffee-stained, or worse, and the place buzzes under yellow fluorescent lights. This makes stepping into Anne's office—a huge window, walls plastered over floor-to-ceiling with Monet prints—a breath of fresh air. Caroline doesn't even know he's still seeing her, but he's kind of gotten used to the routine. Plus, she has chocolate, and even lets him smoke if it's not raining.

He sees her a week before Kalia's second birthday, for the first time in a month (things have been transitional, at work, he's been in charge of rolling out Clifton's new vegan menu, and between that and Kalia there just hasn't been time).

"What's up, Mama Lex!" he says, and she greets him with a hug and a fist bump.

"Fill me in, Steve," she says, grabbing some Hershey kisses from a desk drawer and tossing them across her desk.

"No," he says, unwrapping one, "Not while you're calling me 'Steve,' anyway." He slouches in his chair and swivels back and forth, leaning back to look at the water lilies.

"I'll call you Steve as long as you keep calling me 'Mama,'" she throws back. "I hate that. Makes me feel old."

"Naw, Mama Lex, you're just real _wise_," says Holder. "Repaired my fractured psyche and all, didn't you?"

"Sure," she says, laughing. "I'll take it. But I think you did most of that yourself."

"What can I say?"

"Don't get cocky," she warns him, smiling. He doesn't even need to tell her it's his two year mark, today, she congratulates him without prompting.

She goes a step further, also: There's a new NA job opening up in Rainier; they need someone part-time to do the adolescent programming and lead the groups.

"I think you'd be good," says Anne, handing him a notecard with a phone number.

"Really?" He asks, and he's honestly taken aback. "I know two years is fine, for me, but—"

"You're a good guy, Holder," says Anne. "You're a good guy who's sober, and who's been there, and who cares."

"Ok," he says, taking the card. "I'll ruminate on it."

He convinces Clifton's to keep him on part-time, and begins the NA job four months later. It's small, to start out, but word of mouth is strong, and soon he's got twenty kids a session. It feels good, to be fixing something, or trying to.

_Practice an attitude of gratitude_, he thinks, one of his addict sayings.

It's not hard, not with his miraculous daughter and his fucked-up, maddening, spectacular NA kids. Holder is grateful every day.

He only goes on the date—a set-up by the busboy at Clifton's, his mom's sister or something—because Anne makes him.

He does some research and picks out a fancy Italian place by the water, "Francesca's." He shaves. Other than with Caroline, who had pretty low expectations, Holder's never been the dating type, and the whole ordeal stresses him out.

The lady is pretty enough, though, and conversation's not too bad during the car ride over. Things start off on a bad foot, however, when they get to the restaurant and she asks him how long it's been since he dated.

"A while," says Holder, and, feeling awkward, offers Kalia as an excuse.

She starts talking about her ex-husband, then, and he may have had some drinks if not for this new job that he likes so fucking much. His date, however, drinks enough for the both of them, and thirty minutes in she gets quiet and teary, spinning her glass stem between her fingers.

"Have you ever been in love?" she finally blurts, not looking at him, just staring at the tablecloth with her head in her hand.

Holder is a little shocked; that's the sort of thing that Anne doesn't even ask him. In his head, though, is _Honesty, Open-mindedness, Willingness_—he preaches this shit, now, every week—and he finds himself saying "Yes" before he even realizes it.

His date nods, as if she understands. "How many times?" she asks.

"Singular," he says.

"Do you think that you'll ever be able to have that, again, you know?" she asks, and this time looks up at him from across the table, literal tears in her eyes. Holder is starting to rethink his friendship with the busboy.

But because he's not an asshole, not anymore, he reaches across the table and grabs her hand.

"Honest?" he begins, "Not really, no." And when she starts crying a little more, at that, he continues: "You can be OK, though, you feel me? You can always hope for better days ahead. You can expect that."

He ends up giving her Anne's number when he drops her off later. He never thought his life would come down to helping other people with their emotional shit day-in and day-out, but he's happy, mostly, and not going to question it.

Holder's been doing the NA job full-time for six months when he breaks for a smoke and walks outside to see Linden standing there, small and wrapped up in her coat, sort of as if she never left. Something opens or uncoils within him, like letting out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

_Always hope for better days ahead_, he thinks, and that's not one of his addict sayings.

It's sunny, today, and Linden's wearing blue. "Hi," she says, and smiles.


End file.
